


The Tower and the Chariot

by giddytf2



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, And I mean LOTS of feels, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Derek, Bottom Derek Hale, Bottom Stiles Stilinski, Canon compliant up to 3x24, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feels, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Oblivious Derek, Oblivious Stiles, Panic Attacks, Romantic Angst, Romantic Fluff, Stiles Has Panic Attacks, Top Derek, Top Derek Hale, Top Stiles Stilinski, lots of feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 04:53:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1927332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giddytf2/pseuds/giddytf2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Stiles has reached the point in life where he can now read Derek with a mere glance, read volumes of tales in Derek’s smallest gestures and gazes. When Derek brushes thick, strong fingers across the back of his hand, he reads, <i>I’m glad you’re here, with me</i>. When Derek’s large, hypnotizing eyes linger upon his face and Derek’s lips quirk up like they do when Derek can’t help it, he reads, <i>I don’t understand you, sometimes you make me so crazy I could climb the walls of our house all day but I need you so goddamn much, I do</i>. When Derek caresses his face – his eyelashes, his nose, his lips – in the middle of the night when they’re under the covers in their bed and Derek thinks he’s asleep, he reads, <i>I love you, don’t leave me, I love you</i>.'</p><p>(Or, a very fluffy with-a-dash-of-angst-but-also-smut Sterek future fic through Stiles' point of view in which they're married and face a challenge to their marriage that Stiles isn't sure it can survive ...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this to have something to fall back on when I work on more chapters of [Imago Dei](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1830190); that story's heading for a very dark place for Derek, and my headspace while writing it will be too. Eep! This was meant to be a short, porny PWP, but it blew up into a monster of a one-shot story (which I've split into two parts and is separate from Imago Dei although some character details are similar). This is also my humble fluffy/romantic contribution to the fandom for all the amazing stories and art that's been created and shared.
> 
> The soundtrack I listened to while writing this is Michael Nyman's [Scent of Love](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgudwYZ47NE). I'll add more tags when the next part is posted.
> 
> And before anyone asks, yes, despite what you'll read in this part, I guarantee a very happy ending! If you don't trust me, well ... trust Scott. (You'll see what I mean.)

\+ + +

What would I do without your smart mouth?  
Drawing me in, and you kicking me out  
You've got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down.

 What's going on in that beautiful mind?  
I'm on your magical mystery ride  
And I'm so dizzy, don't know what hit me, but I'll be all right.

 -        John Legend, _All of Me_

\+ + +

 

Stiles has reached the point in life where he can now read Derek with a mere glance, read volumes of tales in Derek’s smallest gestures and gazes. When Derek brushes thick, strong fingers across the back of his hand, he reads, _I’m glad you’re here, with me_. When Derek’s large, hypnotizing eyes linger upon his face and Derek’s lips quirk up like they do when Derek can’t help it, he reads, _I don’t understand you, sometimes you make me so crazy I could climb the walls of our house all day but I need you so goddamn much, I do_. When Derek caresses his face – his eyelashes, his nose, his lips – in the middle of the night when they’re under the covers in their bed and Derek thinks he’s asleep, he reads, _I love you, don’t leave me, I love you_.

He encourages these little collisions of contact between them. He grazes the back of Derek’s neck with his fingers and plays with the short, dark hair there. He wreaths Derek’s back with his whole body, nestles his face in the warmth of Derek’s long neck. Wraps his arms around Derek’s waist. Presses the front of his thighs to the back of Derek’s. He gazes at Derek when they’re in their study, at Derek wearing those goofy, black spectacles (“They’re not ‘hipster glasses’, Stiles, shut up.”) while reading a book on a black leather couch. When it isn’t winter and it’s warm enough, he gazes at Derek doing all that naked on said couch and rejoices in the reality that he doesn’t have to veil his fucking immeasurable affection, desire and _love_ for the handsome, loyal, intelligent werewolf anymore.

He still finds it hard to believe that he’s twenty-nine years old. That he’s the resident criminal psychologist of Beacon Hills as well as Beacon County, a consultant with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit who helped to apprehend the Contra Costa Butcher over a year ago. That he’s here at all, living in the restored Hale house for the past three years and counting, its co-owner with Derek. _Married_ to Derek for two of those years. Married and safe and _happy_.

He’s the luckiest son-of-a-Sheriff who ever lived, that’s who he is.

Scott’s tarot cards even told him so.

“You and Derek are the Tower and the Chariot,” Scott had said to him almost six years ago in the living room of the Stilinski abode, when he and Derek were still just reliable allies. Just casual friends, before they became best friends and then the most intimate of lovers. “Derek, the Tower; commanding the attention and acknowledgement of all those around him. Aggressive. Intimidating, You, the Chariot; steadfast like the Tower, taking on what’s important through meticulous preparation for resolute, safest courses of action. A journey of love, for you, will likely be ruled by the same mindset.”

He’d laughed then, of course. Watched Scott shuffle a deck of Rider-Waite tarot cards that Scott’s former college girlfriend had given him for a birthday gift. Gazed at Scott with gleaming eyes and an open mind.

“Tell me more,” he replied nonchalantly, eager to see how much of the arcane Scott had learned from his pagan ex. “Tell me about this … journey of love.”

He’d prided himself on his voice and heartbeat remaining steady in the presence of a true Alpha werewolf like Scott. Scott could hear, _see_ so much of him from a single skip in his voice, his heartbeat.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, man. Bring it on. I wanna know what I got coming my way.”

Scott had earlier set the Tower and the Chariot on the coffee table between them. He now stared at the cards. Blinked. Stared at Stiles for a minute, then back at the cards. By the time Scott spoke again, he had Stiles’ undivided attention.

“Together, as the Tower and the Chariot, the two of you offer protection to those around you and boldly work together to achieve common goals,” Scott went on, the fingers of his right hand spread across the bottom half of the cards. “You are the moon to his waters. He is the rock to your tide. He is the unexpected. You are the inevitable. When he falls, struck by the lightning of higher forces at work, you’ll be there to catch him and rebuild him. Restore balance and control in him, in yourself. You see the darkness in him as he does in you, but you both also see the light in each other and honor it. When you’re challenged, you’ll both find strength within yourselves and each other to overcome all obstacles, having already survived the fires of the past.” And here, Scott’s voice went low with what sounded almost like reverence:“When the Chariot is driven well, a romantic relationship with the Tower is one of the deepest and most spiritual ones possible in the universe.”

Stiles hadn’t laughed then. He’d shivered and fought the sudden urge to flinch from the cards, to seize and shake Scott by the shoulders and make Scott take back all those damning, _exposing_ words. Scott might as well have ripped out the innermost contents of his mind and heart and laid them out for the world to devour.

He swallowed hard. Glowered at Scott. Slapped his right hand onto the cards, slaying the tiny bud of fear and awe towards them that threatened to bloom in him.

“There are just two problems with your divination, buddy,” he eventually said, having regained his voice and composure, smirking. “One, I didn’t ask for a forecast of me and _Derek_. I just asked what our tarot cards would be. And two, Derek’s ramrod _straight_. Like, ‘steel rebar up his ass and spine’ straight. But nice try anyway.”

“Whatever you say,” Scott said, giving him an enigmatic smile and putting away the cards. Stiles hasn’t seen them since.

As it turns out, Stiles had no idea how right he’d been. Partially. Mostly just the bit about Derek having phallic things up that muscular, nibble-worthy bubble-butt. That, he’d experienced firsthand on their fifth official date as a couple. He’s lost count of how many unofficial dates he’s had with Derek since they knew each other. Probably around a thousand, give or take a few hundred.

“You two were practically dating each other from the moment you met in the Preserve!” Scott had said during their private wedding dinner in the Hale house, waving around a half-full glass of wolfsbane-laced malt whisky, his fourth one. “Five seconds in, and I was already a third wheel standing there like an ass while you two gave each other googly eyes! Like, _ffffffffff-fire in the hole_! _BWWHOOOSH_!”

His dad and Scott’s mom had sat there at the dining table hiding their mouths with their hand and drink, their shoulders shaking. Lydia, Jackson, Kira, Isaac, Danny and Cora – who’d flown in from South America with her Mexican human husband and all-around good guy – hadn’t bothered to hide their glee. Even Deaton was smiling, the tips of his lips curved up in amusement. Derek was redder than a ripe strawberry from forehead to neck, lower lip sucked in, staring down at his plate and looking like the most adorable, muscular, stubbly werewolf in a smart tuxedo to ever exist.

And oh god, Derek had fucked him hard on the marble counter of their en suite bathroom mere hours ago, before everyone arrived. Did Scott develop sex activity-detection abilities in the form of puns without telling anyone or something?

“No, no no no _no_ , we only started officially dating two years ago!” he countered, rapidly poking a forefinger on Scott’s (also muscular) chest. “And you should know, _you’re_ the one who kicked us out of the car that day and made us stand outside in the rain to _talk about feelings_!”

Sure, he and Derek and everyone else can laugh about it now, but when it happened, he’d been one pissed off, stressed out dude who was about to fly back to New York City for the next semester of his PhD course at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and never, ever return to Beacon Hills. He was sick of Derek not _getting it_ with the dinners and movie get-togethers and _more_ dinners – candlelight ones, too, just the two of them! – and even that time when they went to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale and he persuaded Derek to don a plain steel suit of Maximilian armor for a quick photo shoot outside. (Jesus, did the ladies go nuts that day, and him included.)

Derek obviously saw him as just a friend and nothing more. He was just wasting his time, Derek’s time. It fucking hurt, but it was the best decision to leave Beacon Hills and put some distance between Derek and himself. Just move the fuck _on_ already before Derek found someone he _could_ love as more than a friend and marry her and shove Stiles’ broken dreams of a happily ever after with Derek into his face until he was all bled out.

Luckily for him, Scott was as eternally starry-eyed and stubborn a bastard as he was.

Scott somehow convinced Derek to come along on the car ride to the Beacon Hills airport from the Stilinski house. He still doesn’t know how Scott managed it, but he did and there Derek was, slumped in the front passenger seat of Scott’s car, looking like somebody just stabbed him through the chest with a rebar (and he knows what that literally looks like, _god_ , such is life with a Hale werewolf). Derek could scarcely look at him, much less talk to him. That just made him even more certain of his decision to stay away from Beacon Hills from then on, made it the tiniest bit easier.

He hadn’t said a word about his plan to Derek or Scott or anybody else.

Somehow, Scott just _knew_.

Not even a mile from the Stilinski house, Scott abruptly pulled the car to the side of the road. Shut off the car and then stared pointedly at Derek who stared out the windshield and was quiet and motionless as stone. It was surreal. It made his heart beat faster, made his chest throb like a storm was on its way, headed straight for them and intent on devastating them.

Without a word, without glancing at him or Scott, Derek got out of the car and trudged away from it. Derek’s broad back faced the windshield. His face was concealed from view. His head was bowed and his shoulders were hunched, and he looked like someone who’d seen the oncoming storm and didn’t give the damn about being struck dead by lightning.

Derek looked like a man who thought he was about to lose everything and was powerless to stop it.

“What the _hell_?”

He had scrambled out of the car after Derek, and it was just his luck that right there and then, it began to rain. He’d called out to Derek, asked Derek what was wrong and when Derek wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t even turn to face him, he threw his hands up in the air and stomped back to the car to get back in before he got drenched.

Except he couldn’t. Because Scott the asshole locked all the doors and wouldn’t open them.

“Scott, open the door.”

Scott the _asshole_ wouldn’t even look at him. Scott kept staring at Derek with that sharp glint in his eyes and Derek was staring right back like they were having a conversation he couldn’t hear and he was getting wet from head to toe and just, no. Enough.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Scott?” he shouted, smacking the driver’s window with both hands. “Let me back in the car! _Now_!”

“No.”

It took him a few seconds to realize it was Derek who’d said that and not Scott. Derek, standing near the car’s left headlight, slowly getting soaked in the rain, staring at _him_ now.

“What?” He stepped away from the car. Took a step or two towards Derek, blinking cold water out of his eyes. “Derek, it’s _raining_ and I’m – we’re getting wet and the last thing I want is to get onto the plane in wet clothes and –”

“No. Don’t go.”

“Derek, I –“

“ _Don’t leave me_.”

Just three rasped words, and they were enough to make the world around them disappear. Make him untouchable to the rain, to his sodden clothes. Make him warmer than the sun at noon in a clear, blue sky. Make him feel _alive_ again. For an instant.

Derek wanted him to stay. But Derek loved him only as a friend.

“Derek … _Derek_ –“ He shut his eyes and ran his fingers through his damp hair. Sucked in a deep breath. Opened his eyes again. “I want to stay. I do. I really do. But I can’t do this anymore. I – I can’t be _just_ your friend anymore, okay? I want … I want more than that. I want it _all_. I want the hand-holding and the corny, mushy conversations and the _cuddling_ and laughing together and _moving in_ and _growing old_ together and – everything. I want everything. With you. And if that makes me a fucking selfish asshole, then I guess I am one and this is the part where you’re gonna tell me that because you’re –“

When Derek’s lips smashed against his, he thought he really had been struck by lightning. He’d felt like his head exploded, like every cell in his body had been electrified and charged with the energy of a thousand blazing stars, like he was floating in the vastness of space above the Earth and yet was as vast as space itself, alit by universes upon universes and their ethereal storms and hopes. He’d felt every inch of Derek’s firm, burly body against his. Felt Derek’s arms around his torso like vises crushing his anguish to dust. Felt Derek’s hands under his hoodie and shirt and on his arched back, felt Derek’s stubble scratch his cheeks and chin, felt Derek’s lips and tongue commune with his again and again.

He’d grabbed at Derek’s shoulders in return. Curled his fingers in Derek’s hair and ran his hands down Derek’s neck and back and sides, wriggled them under Derek’s waterlogged, white Henley and pressed them against the triskelion tattoo on Derek’s upper back. Moaned into Derek’s mouth as much as Derek moaned into his, inhaled every gasp and sigh and murmured word of adoration into his lungs, his blood, his very self.

The Notebook’s got absolute fuck all on their kiss in the rain. (And thanks to Scott and his _sneaky_ ways, even Lydia the Notebook fanatic agrees with that after watching the video Scott recorded with his smartphone and then sent to the rest of the pack. And yes, he and Derek have copies of it too.)

Until today, he still blames the mind-blowing, stupefying kiss for what he mumbled to Derek when it sadly came to an end.

“Derek … Derek, you’re _straight_.”

Yeah, he totally deserved the exasperated glare he got from Derek for that. It was toned down due to Derek’s soggy hair sticking to that high forehead. Pretty difficult to radiate a scary vibe when he looked like he had a bowl haircut ala Moe the Stooge.

“Yes, Stiles, I’m straight,” Derek said, deadpan. “I’m so straight I just kissed my _male_ best friend in the rain and begged him to stay because I’m mad about him and I don’t know what to do without him. I’m so straight I haven’t dated anyone else in _years_ and I don’t even care because I already know who I want to be with for the rest of my life, and he’s an _idiot_ who thinks I would go to late night movies and _candlelight dinners_ alone with him as a mere _friend_ and put on a _metal suit of armor_ on a _summer afternoon_ in a crowded faire just for _fun_!”

Stiles couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. He was flying. He was the Chariot, soaring through the heavens, a sun-god bringing light and healing to the world, reborn from the love of a wolf, of his mighty Tower. His meticulous plans to woo Derek _had_ been fruitful, just like Scott had divined. He’d simply been too blind to see that until now.

He smiled. He laughed, his eyes crinkled as water trailed rivulets down his face and neck.

“You looked so damn _good_ in it. My trusty knight in shining armor.”

He stroked Derek’s hair, lifting it off Derek’s forehead so he could see Derek’s equally crinkled, glistening eyes.

“But you’re the one who saves me, Stiles,” Derek whispered, and then they were holding hands, and their foreheads and noses touched and they couldn’t stop smiling and everything was just right.

“Why didn’t you _say_ anything?” he rasped against Derek’s lips.

“Why didn’t _you_?”

“I was _scared_ , goddamnit. I thought you’d figure it out without me having to say it! I was scared that you just loved me as a friend and that if you knew I’m in love with you, we’d never be the same again and I would have _killed_ the best thing in my life and I just … can’t lose you. Okay? I just can’t.”

Derek’s smile widened. Derek’s eyes softened even more, going from a cool blue to a warm green speckled with gold in the sunshine peeking through the clouds.

“You have a bad habit of stealing words from my mouth.”

For that, Stiles kissed him again, tenderly.

“Why now? Why only now when I have to go back to NYC, you idiot. Idiot, idiot, _idiot_ ,” he said, touching their foreheads together once more, hitting Derek’s chest with the heels of his hands.

“Dumbass,” Derek said, grasping his hips and caressing his skin under his shirt, trying to frown in mock offense and failing so hard.

“Sour-faced wolf.”

“Annoying smart-mouth.”

“Beefy, fuzzy, cunning, unpredictable Adonis.”

Derek’s lips quivered, as did his.

“Hyperactive,” Derek said hoarsely, “confusing, smart, beautiful, _amazing_ –“

And once again, they were kissing, a long and serious kiss brimming with promises of so much more to come. The rain had stopped. The sun gilded them with rays of orange and yellow and warmed them and they didn’t give a damn that they were making out next to a main road and people were honking their car horns as they passed.

Scott definitely didn’t, filming them and snapping photos of them with his smartphone like he was.

“Stop looking so smug, you damn asswipe!” Stiles yelled at him, wishing he had something to hurl at the grinning asshole’s face.

Scott didn’t answer him. Instead, Scott poked at the screen of his phone and then, with an expression of purest wickedness Stiles had ever seen, recorded an audio message that went, “See, I told you guys I’d win. I _told_ you guys those two idiots were fated to be together but _nooooo_ , none of you took me seriously and betted against me and now _look at you_ , basking in the glory of the video I just sent you. And that series of numbers? That’s my bank account number. You guys know what to do. _I’ll be checking_.”

Like he said: Asshole, such an asshole.

Of course he and Derek chose Scott to be their best man at their wedding. There was no one else more apt for the task, really.

“Drive that Chariot good, Stiles,” Scott had slurred to him after the wedding dinner while Derek was seeing the others off at the front porch, swaying from an excess of wolfsbane-laced alcohol and giddiness. The fun kind. “As long as you drive it good, _eveeeeerything_ will be great. You remember that, okay?”

“Sure, buddy, sure,” he’d replied, patting Scott on the back as they hugged. “I’ll remember.”

Thing is, he never did ask Scott what it meant to drive his Chariot well. He’d assumed it meant being himself and loving Derek with all he’s got, like he always has. And being the luckiest son-of-a-Sheriff who ever lived, having really reached the point that he can now read Derek with a mere glance, a mere touch while being married, safe and _happy_ with Derek, everything should be as perfect as their first kiss.

The keywords being, _should be_.

Derek being the Tower, the unexpected, it’s perhaps Stiles’ lapse in vigilance in not anticipating change to seep into their life through Derek. That’s what he’s telling himself anyway, to calm himself down so he can _think_. The alternative is to freak the fuck out, and he really doesn’t want to do that, not when he’s in the study at Derek’s desk, staring into its bottom drawer at the stack of lingerie catalogs in it.

Oh, there’s no mistaking the catalogs for what they are. Every single one he flips through feature page after page of young, nubile women in skimpy, sheer lingerie that would have set a fourteen-year-old Stiles’ loins aflame. They’re all Photoshopped to hell and back, but he’d be a liar to say they aren’t already pretty. He gapes at their big eyes with thick lashes, their lustrous and long blonde and brunette hair. Their full, red lips. Big boobs. Bigger butts. Draped in titillating lace and flawless makeup and huge, enticing smiles.

They’re everything Stiles isn’t. Stiles Stilinski-Hale, also known as Derek’s _husband_.

And yet, here they are in Derek’s desk. Deliberately tucked away in the dark where he would never have seen them if he hadn’t accidentally banged into the desk like the clumsy oaf he can be and knocked the drawer out. His left hip still aches from the impact. His heart aches even more at the thought that Derek’s been ogling these women in these scanty, arousing undergarments behind his back. That Derek is ogling these women because Derek doesn’t want to be with a man anymore. Doesn’t want to be with _him_.

Fuck, some of the pages even have _dog-ears_. Derek’s browsed through these damn things so often that he has _favorite women to ogle_.

The catalogs burn his hands, his eyes. He wants to fling them into a fire and watch them diminish to ashes. He wants to march up to Derek and fling them at Derek’s face and demand an explanation. _Right now_.

But he doesn’t. He can’t.

What if Derek tells him he wants out of their marriage? What if Derek tells him he’s finally fed up of being with him, tells him that, _oops, sorry, Stiles, it looks like I’m a lot more into women after all and I know for sure thanks to you and your_ _flat chest, small butt and skinny, mole-spotted, unattractive body, and gee, what do you know, you’re not as good at reading me as you thought, huh_?

He will go insane and end up in Eichen House again. He really will. He’d meant it when he told Derek he can’t bear to lose Derek. Ever. Not after everything they’ve been through together.

Photos from the catalogs go around and round in his head the entire day, long after he’d placed them back in the drawer and darted from the study to the back porch to pace its wooden-planked length in fresh forest air. It’s a good thing Derek’s away on a short promotional trip to Los Angeles for his latest crime novel. A good thing that it’s his day off from the station and he’s gone off the grid to _relax_. It is. It really is. He really doesn’t want Derek to see him going haywire like this, biting his fingernails and muttering to himself and walking up, down, up, down, up, down. Hasn’t lost it like this in a long time.

He knew it. He always knew it that one day, Derek would get bored of him and want somebody better. Want a _woman_ again. So what if Derek had said he wants to be with him for life and put a ring on his finger as proof? So what if Derek told him he loves him and that he’s been in love with him from the second they met? Derek had dated and fucked other people since that supposed second, and one of them had been a psychotic, monstrous emissary who was a Freddy Krueger-wannabe who didn’t even have the cool steel claws! And okay, yeah, he’s been head over heels in love with Derek since the second they met too and he’d also fucked and dated Malia – Derek’s _cousin_ , for crying out loud – for a while, but he’d been so messed up in the head then, not to mention what happened with the Nogitsune and –

He groans and slaps his hands over his face, still walking up and down the porch.

Damnit, Derek’s just too beautiful and remarkable to be trapped to a guy like him for life. Derek deserves someone as beautiful and remarkable as he is, really, he does. Not a gawky, embarrassing weirdo like him whose job is to look at murder victims and think and talk about how they died and what their killers are like and how to capture said killers. Derek should have someone he can be _proud_ of. Someone _normal_ after all the crazy shit they’ve had to deal with.

And this new … _development_ , this _has_ to be his fault. He’s the goddamn Chariot. He’s the one responsible for driving it well so their relationship will remain deep and spiritual and _good_. Somewhere along the way, he fucked up. Big time.

Where did he go wrong? _Where_?

He rolls the engraved platinum band around the fourth finger of his left hand over and over as he paces. It chafes the soft skin between his fingers.

The second anniversary of their wedding is coming up in just two months.

Oh, shit.

The second anniversary of their wedding is coming up in just two months and he’s already filed for the previous day to be an off-day so he can thoroughly prepare and cook that uber-romantic dinner he’s planned for ages: salmon gravadlax as an appetizer, cooked oysters with burnt butter and grilled mushroom risotto for the main course with pomegranate Champagne cocktails, and oozing baked chocolate pudding topped with toasted hazelnut for dessert, because they’re Derek’s favorites –

He skids to a halt, frozen like a statue as he stares sightlessly into the forest beyond and wraps one arm around his midriff and presses a thumb to his lower lip.

Oh, _shit_ , what if that’s all the time he’s got before Derek ends their marriage? What if that’s the day Derek decides to tell him it’s over? It makes sense that Derek would choose to do that before another year of their marriage has the chance to start. Cut it deep. Cut it quick, cut it even.

And no, _no_ , it isn’t like he’s just extrapolating bullshit on nothing here. He _can_ read Derek with a mere glance. He’s always been reading Derek, reading him for the past few weeks and … there were signs. There were. He can’t deny them, not any longer. Tiny changes in Derek’s smallest gestures and gazes. Like the long, pensive looks Derek gives him when Derek thinks he doesn’t know. Like the odd skittishness that’s gradually manifested itself in fleeting moments, in Derek sometimes tensing for a heartbeat at his touch or jolting in surprise when he walks into the study unannounced, like he’d almost caught Derek doing something he shouldn’t. (Like ogling scantily clad women behind the desk so much that Derek didn’t even hear or smell him with his werewolf senses, for fuck’s sakes!)

_Fuck_ , what is he going to do now?

What’s he going to say to Derek when Derek comes home tomorrow?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.

At 8PM the next night, he still doesn’t know what to say to Derek as he stands on the front porch and watches Derek pay the cab for the ride from the airport to their house. He’d arrived home just five minutes ago, held up at the station by a truckload of paperwork that he should have completed a long time ago. Really. He really had to finish it. It’s not like he was just using it as an excuse to stay at the station and try avoiding Derek. No.

When the cab zooms off, Derek strides up the quartzite walkway and up the three steps to where he stands on the porch. In an instant, Derek’s dropped his luggage bag onto the floor and has him in a dazing bear hug, burying a bristly face into the side of his neck. Derek’s scenting him. Marking him as pack, as Derek’s. He pushes his own face into the side of Derek’s neck, breathing in Derek’s natural, aromatic scent. Derek smells so damn good, like the forest after rain, like buttermilk rum baba cake straight out of the oven, like bare skin in sunlight after a refreshing dip in a cool pond. Derek smells like _his_.

But he isn’t sure about that. Not anymore.

_Are you thinking about those women when you hold me like this? Do you wish you were holding them instead?_

He clamps his lips together, quashing the condemning questions in his dry mouth. His wedding ring singes his finger.

“I missed you so much,” Derek says into his skin. Derek’s stubble scratches his neck and lower jaw. He can feel Derek’s lips moving upon his skin, imprinting the words onto him with a hot exhalation that would send shivers coursing down his spine. Make him sigh. Make him drag Derek’s face to his for a deep, long kiss leading to many more.

But tonight, all he can see behind his eyelids is Derek kissing someone else. Kissing a woman. A voluptuous one, with long, luxuriant hair and big, sultry eyes and full, pouting lips. Just like his exes. Exes that look absolutely nothing like him.

“Stiles? Are you okay?”

Derek’s drawn back and is gazing at his face, rubbing his upper arms with those strong, large hands. This close up, Derek’s hazel eyes are lethal weapons of his heart’s destruction, humongous and bright under the illumination of the porch light. He tries to read Derek’s touch, and what he gets is, _I’m worried about you, I want you to be all right_.

But he doesn’t know anymore if that’s all it says. Or if there are lines between the lines, obscured lines that he hadn’t noticed before, tucked in the dark and out of his sight until he ran into them.

Is Derek’s concern genuine? Or is it mere pretense, to make him believe everything’s fine when it isn’t?

He’s upset, so fucking upset that he can’t tell the difference.

“Stiles?”

Derek’s brow is furrowed in a mild frown. Stiles reads more of Derek’s concern in it, and that’s what prompts him to stammer, “Yeah. _Yeah_ , I’m fine. Just fine.”

Oh. There goes his heart, skipping like the weak traitor it is to Derek’s supernatural hearing. He can never control it, not when the werewolf in question is Derek.

Derek’s frown deepens. Stiles glances at Derek’s mouth, at his neck above the collar of a black t-shirt, over a broad shoulder at the quartzite path. Anywhere except Derek’s eyes. Derek’s probably smelling the lie in his reply too. Derek once said deceit smells sour, rancid, like puked alcohol or rotting fatty food. He probably smells like that right now. Wonderful.

“Is it a case?”

Derek’s voice is low. Gentle. Derek is still gazing at him, at his face like it’s a mysterious book he’s trying to decipher. It hurts to gaze back at Derek, at Derek’s gorgeous face that has only become more breathtaking with time and age. There are strands of silver in Derek’s dark hair and stubble. There are more creases at the corners of those hazel eyes, a little more softness of that granite jawline and little dark spots dotting the silky skin of that long neck and Derek’s so damn _beautiful_ and he … he doesn’t really deserve someone like Derek.

What the hell does Derek _see_ in him? What the hell did Derek _ever_ see in him?

He has to cough and clear his throat before putting on what he hopes isn’t a tremulous smile.

“I’m _fine_ , Derek. Really. I’m fine.”

Oops, there goes his heart again. He doesn’t look Derek in the eye. He doesn’t have to do so to know Derek’s heard the telltale skip.

Derek’s hands linger on his upper arms. They feel like mounting fire, slowly scorching him through his dark blue cardigan and white t-shirt. They feel like the iron bars of a prison.

He steps back before he can stop himself. Derek’s hands jerk and curl around emptiness and suddenly, Stiles can’t breathe and he grabs Derek’s luggage bag from the floor before Derek can say anything.

“How about pizza, huh?” he says as he goes back into the house through the open front door. “I’ll call and you can go wash up and then you can regale me with your adventures in the City of Angels, what do you say?”

It takes Derek six seconds to respond, to agree in a subdued voice and enter the house after him. After calling Crezsenzo’s – his and Derek’s favorite Italian place in town that offers delivery – he waits in the living room for Derek to finish showering and come downstairs. On any other night, he’d be in the shower with Derek, helping Derek to wash his hair and soap him up and kiss and caress all that smooth, wet skin with his fingers and lips. They’d be making love under the cascade of water, Derek pinning him to the tiled wall, thrusting into him and filling him up until he can’t stand it and screams from the pleasure.

He sits quiet and motionless as rock on the couch in front of the switched-off television. He thinks about the lingerie catalogs in Derek’s desk.

Derek doesn’t come down until the pizza arrives.

They eat in the kitchen at the counter bordering the stove in the center of the room. As he’d requested, Derek tells him about his trip to Los Angeles and in some ways, they slip back into their usual selves; he listening with interest as Derek speaks animatedly about meeting his readers and autographing books for them, he picking out the olives from Derek’s pizza slices because Derek doesn’t like them in pizza but he does, refilling their mugs with iced water when necessary. He smiles easily here, his pride of his husband sincere and real. Derek’s come a long way from his reclusive, pessimistic past self. Derek’s moved on from his tragic, haunted past and stepped into the light a new man, a happier man with newfound purpose.

And maybe that’s why Derek wants to move on from _him_ too.

He’s such a major part of the tragic, haunted chapters of Derek’s history. He’d gotten Derek arrested for his older sister’s murder. He almost had to hack off Derek’s arm when Derek was shot by Kate Argent – that lunatic murderer, may she rot in hell for eternity, amen – and he and Derek had to help each other from getting killed by the kanima while floating for hours in a frigid swimming pool. Then there was that time they were paralyzed by the kanima poison and his dad almost died when that bomb went off and killed so many of his dad’s co-workers, _friends_. Then there were those Alpha pack fuckers and Derek had to kill Boyd after Erica died, and then his dad almost died (again) at the hands of Ms. Freddy Krueger-wannabe and he’d fought with Derek in the hospital and almost cried in front of Derek, and then there was him admitting himself into Eichen House and then there was the Nogitsune and the goddamn demon wore _his_ face and body as it harmed his beloved Derek –

Jesus, he’s amazed that Derek can even look at him without utter disgust, much less fall in love with him and marry him.

Maybe, just maybe, Derek’s figured this out too.

Stiles almost heaves a sigh of relief when Derek decides to crash into bed immediately after dinner, falling asleep fast under the covers after giving him a goodnight peck on the cheek. He doesn’t want to talk. He certainly doesn’t want to talk about what’s going on inside his head and he certainly does _not_ want to talk about the goddamn catalogs. No. Just, _no_.

If two months is all he has left with Derek, he’s going to avoid thinking about them and the women in them. Completely. Yeah. That’s what he’ll do. He will.

He’s successful. For about half a day.

From then on, an invisible monster is born and grows in every room with them, larger with each passing day. He can feel it sitting on his shoulders, his chest whenever he’s in Derek’s presence, whenever Derek goes to the study to brainstorm for his next novel. He can’t bear to be in that room anymore despite it being one of his favored spots in the house. The black leather couch in it harbors too many memories of them making love on it. And of course, those goddamn _catalogs_ , stuffed in Derek’s desk while Derek sits and works there like they aren’t there.

He starts hanging out in the living room instead, spreading out his folders, documents and laptop on the coffee table and sitting on a cushion on the floor as he works. If Derek’s noticed this, Derek doesn’t say a word to him about it. Derek doesn’t ask about it. He, in turn, doesn’t ask what Derek does in the study when he isn’t there to see it.

They spend more time apart, each busy with their own careers. Derek holes himself up in the study to work on his new book. Stiles is invited by the FBI to the Academy in Quantico to teach some classes on criminal profiling and discuss his profiling work in the Contra Costa Butcher case. He flies to and fro from Beacon Hills to Virginia. Derek also flies to and fro from Beacon Hills to Los Angeles to meet with his editor. They talk on the phone and message each other, but they rarely see each other in person.

The invisible monster grows, gargantuan and suffocating.

A month away from their second anniversary, together at home for once, Derek’s fucking him in their bed, slow and deep, the way he enjoys it. He’s on his back, Derek blanketing him, nuzzling his neck and murmuring something into it. Derek’s cock is thick and searing and striking him in all the right places and yet, he’s only half-hard. He bows his back and spreads his thighs even more. He sucks precious air into lungs that won’t cooperate with him. He hears Derek gasp into his ear, a breathy, sharp gasp of appreciation punctuated by a fierce thrust that propels them up the bed. He cries out and claws at the pillow under his head. Oh, he felt that one, he _really_ felt that one.

He’s still only half-hard.

He stares at the ceiling. He moans at another forceful strike on his prostate, at Derek grinding into him. He feels the invisible monster in his chest, sitting on his heart.

_Do you fuck me because you wish I was a woman, Derek? Because that makes it easier for you to fuck me at all?_

He chokes and has to blink his stinging eyes numerous times to clear them. Holy shit, where the hell did _that_ come from? Holy _shit_ , why hasn’t he considered that a possibility?

Derek’s about to come. He can tell from Derek’s thrusts becoming erratic, from Derek’s rough breaths and Derek gripping his hips harder. He tightens around Derek on instinct. He clutches at the back of Derek’s neck and shoulder. He stares at the ceiling and he sees Derek fucking a voluptuous, attractive woman in lacy lingerie, nuzzling her neck, murmuring to her how much he’s missed the heat and softness of a woman’s body.

Derek comes inside him with a bitten-off groan. He rides through the last few deep thrusts as he clings to Derek’s shoulders. His erection’s already wilted. He doesn’t come.

In all the years they’ve had sex, it’s the first time this happens.

Derek is evidently shocked.

“Stiles … you didn’t …”

Derek lays a hand upon his bare belly, over where his come would be splattered. He can feel a slight tremor in Derek’s hand. Derek’s staring down at him with eyes stark with guilt and he can’t stand it, he just can’t.

“It’s fine, Derek. I’m just … I’m just stressed out. It’s fine.”

Derek’s hand on his belly is burning him like a brand.

“Stiles –“

He feels empty. He feels like his body doesn’t belong to him. He feels like he’s drifting above it, a helpless and ghostly witness as he rolls onto his side and away from Derek.

“It’s fine. Really,” he mumbles against his pillow, his eyes shut. “It’s no big deal, okay?”

He hates his weak, traitorous heart so much for skipping, for revealing him to Derek to be the awful liar he is.

He feels Derek’s gaze on him, heavy as an anchor weighing him down to a murky, lifeless seabed. He feels Derek’s hand hovering over his shoulder. Feels it withdraw, feels and hears Derek slide off the bed and stagger to the en suite bathroom. He’s grateful that the bedside lamps are already switched off, that he has his back turned to the bathroom, that Derek doesn’t see him hastily wipe his eyes in the dimness.

He hears Derek switching off the bathroom light. He doesn’t turn around when Derek slides back into bed and under the covers.

His breath doesn’t hitch when he feels Derek curl up against his back, feels Derek’s forehead between his shoulder-blades and the remorse in that single contact. It doesn’t.

His agitated mind goes around and round in circles in the night. He wonders if Derek is feeling guilty simply for not being able to make him achieve orgasm or if there’s more to it. He wonders if this is the beginning of the end, if this is where Derek realizes that he isn’t even worth the sex anymore when his body betrays him like this. Derek’s almost always topped during sex. Sure, whenever he topped Derek, it was blatant each and every time that Derek enjoyed it but Derek’s always topped and he’s never had a problem with that. Derek’s never said anything to the contrary either.

But now, when he can’t come and satisfy Derek even as the bottom guy?

Not much of a surprise, then, that Derek wants out.

For the next two weeks, he travels between Beacon Hills and Quantico once more for lectures. He avoids coffee and sugary foods so he can collapse in bed and make his manic brain shut up for a while. He takes advantage of the gym and swimming pool at the Academy and tires himself out with hours of exercise. He ignores the glances he gets from trainees and other teachers. Yeah, he’s bulked up significantly and put on muscle since his teenage years, grown an inch or two taller (and is the same height as Derek), but he doesn’t need to see himself in the mirror to know what he looks like. He’ll never be as attractive and physically robust as Derek, he knows that.

Outside the gym’s locker room, he’s approached by a red-haired trainee who isn’t in his class for drinks at the cafeteria. He shows her the platinum ring on his finger with a polite smile. She handles the rejection with aplomb, giving him an equally polite, friendly smile and a shrug that says, _you win some, you lose some_. She has an appealing face and long, wavy hair like Lydia’s. In a universe in which Derek didn’t exist, he might have accepted her offer, sauntered with her to the cafeteria to chat and see where things went from there.

A universe in which Derek doesn’t exist, however, is one he doesn’t want to be in. Even one in which Derek is going to leave him soon.

He smiles politely at her again, then walks away and leaves the gym. He immediately heads back to his temporary apartment near the Academy and leaps into the shower. He remains in it until the water turns ice cold.

He and Derek don’t talk on the phone. He receives a few messages from Derek that updates him on Derek’s whereabouts and when Derek will be back in Beacon Hills. He gives Derek the same information about himself. They don’t talk about their upcoming anniversary. They don’t talk about what happened the last time they had sex. They don’t talk about the invisible monster that’s smothering them and everything good about them.

Stiles changes the background screen of his phone to a generic image of a sunset. The photograph of him and Derek smiling at the camera, their cheeks pressed together, mocks him now.

Back in Beacon Hills, he spends more and more hours in his office at the station. His dad’s files are a mess and somebody needs to sort them out and it may as well be him. He knows his dad better than anyone else alive. He’s the man for the job. And if his dad has no clue about what he’s doing, that’s his dad’s problem, not his.

Ten days before the anniversary, he’s sitting behind his desk in his office, staring off into space in the cool light of a fluorescent, plastic desk lamp. The curtains are drawn. He doesn’t know what time it is. There’s a framed photograph of him and Derek on his desk, next to his desktop computer monitor. It’s different from the one he’d used as a background screen for his phone. This one was snapped minutes into the first day of this year by Scott, of he and Derek kissing on the front porch of the Stilinski house, his childhood home while fireworks detonated in the starry sky above them.

Scott and Isaac had to pelt them with ice cubes to break their kissing marathon. They couldn’t get enough of each other. Married almost two years and they couldn’t get enough of each other, like they were still on their honeymoon in the Maldives, in their own extraordinary, secluded world.

He’s tempted to lay the framed photograph face down on the desk. He doesn’t.

He stares at it and thinks about the sensation of Derek’s lips against his that night, about Derek smiling at him with crinkled eyes and quirked lips after Scott and Isaac left them alone again. _Look where we are_ , _look how far we’ve come,_ he’d read from the joyful glow in Derek’s eyes, _look how we’ve proven everyone wrong when they said we wouldn’t and couldn’t be_.

He closes his eyes and slouches in his chair. He breathes, carefully, languidly, past the lump in his throat.

_Look how we’re proving everyone right after all, Derek._

“Stiles?”

He opens his sore eyes to half-mast. He sees his dad, the best sheriff that Beacon Hills’ ever had, standing at the half-open door of his office, staring at him with what appears to be a mixture of curiosity and concern. His dad’s khaki-colored uniform is snug around a bulkier torso. His dad’s hair is more salt-and-pepper than light brown. His dad’s jowls are more distinct and his dad’s eyes are more heavy-lidded and glossy. The loving beam in them for him, though, hasn’t waned in the least.

His dad’s been there for him whenever he needed him, always. His dad’s loved him from the moment he was born. Bestowed upon him the love of two parents when his mother couldn’t be here anymore, and never stopped, not even after he found out about werewolves, magic and abominations of all kinds and almost died so many times because of _him_.

He doesn’t know who or what he might have been in a past life, but he must have done something right to earn Sheriff John Stilinski as his father.

He dredges up a genuine smile for the most important human being in his existence.

“Hey, dad.”

His dad smiles back.

“It’s … half-past eight,” his dad says, one eyebrow raised. “On a Friday night.”

He doesn’t even blink.

“Yeah,” he replies in a monotone voice, his smile fading. On a different Friday night, he would be home already, cuddling with Derek in front of the television while they murmured to each other about their day and laughed together at one thing or another. They always laughed together. They’d tease each other and wrestle on the cushions and smile and laugh and it’d be just the two of them, just them.

There’s that invisible monster between them now. Grown so enormous that they can’t be in the same room without the tension bearing down upon them too, without hesitant glances and stilted dialogues and great walls looming between them.

He doesn’t know how to read a blank wall. Doesn’t know how to climb over it to get to Derek. Doesn’t know if Derek even wants him to do that.

“How’s Quantico?”

His dad’s entered the office and is perched on one corner of his desk, gazing at him. Scrutinizing him. He gazes back, his mask in place, a placid poker face. There’s a reason his dad’s been the sheriff of Beacon Hills for decades. Without the mask, his dad will read him as effortlessly as a children’s picture book, see into every nook and cranny of his mind, his _heart_. His dad doesn’t need to know what’s going on between him and Derek. His dad doesn’t need to know that he’s fucking up yet again and is rushing at Mach 10 towards a crash and burn of agonizing proportions.

He doesn’t want to disappoint another he loves so much. Again.

“It’s going pretty good,” he says, looking his dad in the eye, his voice composed. “Didn’t think I’d take to teaching and lecturing, much less at the FBI Academy, but … it’s good. I like it there. It’s a different animal than Beacon Hills.”

“I remember when you went to NYC for the first time. You took to the big city like a fish in water.”

Stiles chuckles, then says, “Yeah, NYC’s a whole other beast. I gotta admit, I do miss it.”

“Getting bored of our little town?”

His dad’s question is asked so insouciantly. His dad’s posture is relaxed, hands on knees, shoulders drooped. His dad’s lips are arched in an amused smile. The glint in his dad’s eyes tells a different story.

He lets his gaze flit down to the desk. To the framed photograph of him and Derek. Before he knows it, he’s picked up a pen on one of the open folders on his desk and is fidgeting with it, popping its plastic cap open and shut.

His dad doesn’t comment on it. His fiddling is a comment in itself.

“They’re offering me a full-time position as an FBI profiler. Lecturer at the Academy on the side. Told me to think about it and let them know soon.”

“Oh? So, you’re … thinking about moving to Virginia?”

He pops the pen’s cap open and shut faster. He likes the noise it makes, like something fragile fracturing over and over.

“I don’t know.”

His dad steeples calloused fingers on sturdy thighs. It’s one of his dad’s most overt tells (at least to him), from which he reads, _I’m about to go into sheriff mode now and ask you questions you won’t like_.

“What does Derek think about it?”

He presses his thumb on the tip of the pen’s cap. His lips waver for a split second. Well, nice to know he can still read his dad and understand him, if not his own husband. Soon-to-be ex-husband.

He takes a deep breath. Exhales it as an audible sigh. He hopes it didn’t judder with the grave weight in his chest.

“I haven’t told him.”

His dad is silent for a minute. He steels himself for the next inescapable question.

“Is everything okay, son?”

He glances at his dad, at the warm, paternal concern in his dad’s face and eyes. He feels like he’s sixteen years old again. He considers lying. His dad doesn’t need to be burdened with his personal bullshit on top of daily business going on in the station and in town. His dad’s a busy guy with loads of important stuff to do and deal with.

He sucks in his lips. Taps the pen in hand on the desk. Puts the pen down.

“I’m … I’m not sure, dad,” he rasps honestly, because his dad deserves nothing less than the truth.

Shit, he even sounds like he’s sixteen years old again.

They gaze at each other quietly, his dad’s expression softening, his dad’s smile this time one of appreciation for his honesty and of compassion for his distress. He loosens up under his dad’s affectionate regard. He sinks into his chair and allows some of his pain to bleed into his eyes. He’s safe with his dad. His dad will never take advantage of his vulnerability, never lie to him and shatter him. He’s safe.

His dad leans over the desk and rests a hand over his on the desk’s burnished surface.

“You know I’m here for you, son,” his dad murmurs, squeezing his hand. “You know you can come home any time. Door’s always open.”

His dad’s touch siphons some of his sorrow away, like Derek’s touch would whenever he injured himself and Derek was there to use his werewolf healing hocus-pocus. His dad doesn’t need magic to make him feel better. Then again, some would say that a parent’s unconditional love _is_ an exceptional kind of magic. The best kind.

“I know, dad,” he says, smiling and squeezing his dad’s hand back, his chest freer, his soul lighter. “Thanks.”

For the next six days, he spends more time with his dad, eating lunch with him at the station and also dinners at the Stilinski abode. His dad doesn’t ask about Derek, for which he’s acutely grateful. Derek isn’t in town anyway, gone once again to Los Angeles to do … who knows what. He certainly doesn’t. He doesn’t know why Derek has to go see his editor so often.

Unless, of course, they’re meeting for purposes _other_ than work.

He’s yet to meet Derek’s editor, but he’s seen a portrait photograph of her on Derek’s publisher’s website. She’s blonde, with opulent, long hair. She has big, blue eyes and a pert nose and plump lips and fuck, she probably has massive breasts and an ample butt that Derek would go gaga over. Her face alone fits Derek’s preference for his women, if a comparison with his exes is anything to go by –

Holy fucking hell, she’s probably why Derek has those lingerie catalogs in the first place. She’s his secret girlfriend in the big city and has the perfect cover as his editor and he’s buying lingerie for _her_.

Holy fucking shit _fuck hell_.

“Stiles? You all right?”

He almost chokes on the homemade vegetarian lasagna he’s eating for dinner with his dad, but he coughs and recovers and says, “Yeah, _yeah_ , I’m okay. Yeah.”

He knows his dad doesn’t believe him, and he is even more grateful that his dad doesn’t question him about this either. He will just fucking bawl at the table if he has to talk about Derek and his blonde, Junoesque girlfriend in Los Angeles who is abso-fucking-lutely nothing like him and apparently what Derek desires now. What Derek’s always desired.

He stays in his childhood bedroom that night. He doesn’t sleep. He lies on his side in the gloominess with his back facing the window and listlessly surfs through the photos stored in his smartphone. He avoids all the ones of his wedding. Avoids every single one that shows them kissing. He tolerates the group shots with the rest of the pack. He smiles fondly at pictures of Scott grinning like a puppy at the camera, at his childhood best friend, the best friend a guy could ask for.

He has so many memories of him and Scott in this very room, of them playing video games together and watching movies after finishing their homework and just lazing in this very bed, chatting about school and girls and where they’re going to go after graduation. It seems like yesterday that Scott was telling him he was going to marry Allison and settle down in Beacon Hills and have half a dozen cute kids with her. He knows Scott still misses her, over ten years on since her death, and always will. He misses her too.

If there’s anyone who would understand what it means to lose the love of your life and somehow move on from that, it’s Scott. He’s glad that Scott has Isaac now, a fellow bitten werewolf who knows what it’s like to have a cruel bastard for a dad, who loves Scott even when Scott’s rage gets the better of him and the wolf in him hungers for blood and death. Scott’s one of the toughest people he knows and respects. A brother. _Family_.

He skims through his contact list, going up and down, up and down. His finger hovers over the tab displaying Scott’s name. It’s past three o’clock in the morning, but he knows Scott will pick up if he presses the phone symbol next to Scott’s number. He knows Scott will be there.

He presses the back button and returns to the gallery of photos. He expands a photograph of Derek in the plain steel Maximilian suit of amor and stares at it, his throat constricted and dry. It’d been a sunny, cloudless day then. The air crackled from the heat. When Derek had stepped out of the costume store at the faire and into the sunlight, he’d actually clutched at his chest with his right hand and told himself to breathe before he blacked out. Even the photographer, an employee of the store and a middle-aged, portly guy who looked more like a retired Hell’s Angel biker, was thunderstruck by the vision of Derek in the armor and required some prodding on a colossal arm to snap out of his Derek-induced stupor.

Derek looked like a war god who’d emerged from a John Singer Sargent painting to dignify the puny earth with his celestial presence. For someone who’d never worn armor before, Derek moved around and posed in it as if the suit had been shaped just for him. Derek had been scowling, appearing the part of a cross deity, until their eyes met. Whatever it was Derek saw upon his face, in his eyes, it was something that Derek hadn’t expected, had _hoped_ for.

Derek had winked at him. Caused a gaggle of women behind him to squeal and snap photos of Derek with their phones. That was when he’d snapped this photo of Derek, when Derek grinned at him like he was the only person in the universe, the only one Derek wanted and needed.

Derek, his trusty knight in shining armor. Derek, who’d told him that he was the one who saves Derek instead.

He presses the menu button and ends up with the dialing number pad on screen. He has Derek on speed dial on the number ‘3’, his dad being number ‘2’ and Scott number ‘4’. His finger hovers over the number ‘3’. It’s now almost four o’clock in the morning, and he doesn’t know if Derek will pick up if he presses the dial button. He doesn’t know if Derek will even be there. If Derek’s with _her_ right now.

He bites his lower lip. His free hand clenches into a loose fist.

He puts his phone on the bedside table. He remains on his side with his back facing the window. He thinks about all the times Derek’s climbed into his room through that window, dived into his life like a grand boulder slamming into his tranquil tide, triggering ripples across his mirror-still surface and forever altering the very nature of his being.

Where is Derek now, when _he’s_ the one who needs to be saved?

He stares with sore, sightless eyes into the distance. He breathes, carefully, languidly, past the blistering mass in his throat. He waits for the creak of his window, that rusty noise it makes when it’s opened. Waits for the squeak of leather boots against its sill. The near-soundless, graceful arrival of a handsome, loyal, intelligent werewolf in his bedroom.

When he finally subsides into slumber at dawn, too exhausted even for his hyperactive brain to withstand, the window is still closed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to cut the story into three parts instead so you guys don't have to wait so long for an update. Please heed the updated tags!
> 
> And yep, the final part is going to be _so_ NSFW.

On the third day before the anniversary, he’s in a supermarket in town, alone. He has to stock up on ingredients for the dinner on the eve of the anniversary. He doesn’t know if the dinner will even occur, the way things are going, but he’ll purchase whatever he needs, just in case. He may not have time to shop again.

He may not be in the mood to go shopping for anything for a long time after that.

He picks up a bundle of pomegranates from the fruit section. Packs of fresh, raw salmon fillets and oysters from the frozen food section. Some dried porcini mushrooms. Some dill, beetroots, horseradish and lemon for the gravadlax. Risotto rice. A bottle of Champagne for the cocktails, and cooking chocolate, hot espresso, eggs, almonds, rice flour, caster sugar and hazelnuts for the chocolate pudding.

His shopping basket teems with items as he ambles towards the self-checkout section near the exit that leads to the supermarket’s parking lot. There aren’t many shoppers at this time of the evening, a time when most people are having their dinner, and he sees only one person using one of the four self-service checkout terminals. A swift and easy acquisition of goods it is, then.

He’s passing lofty shelves stacked with canned food when he overhears a conversation between two women stemming from the next aisle over. The hush in the supermarket buoys their vivacious discussion clearly to his ears.

“So did you find the camisole you were looking for in L.A. last week?”

“Yes! Yes, I did. It took me _ages_ to find it but I finally did in this indie lingerie store at Westfield Century City. And, oh! Oh, you wouldn’t _believe_ who I saw there.”

“Who?”

“ _Derek Hale_.”

“What? _Seriously_? Derek Hale as in that cute writer who writes those supernatural crime novels?”

“Oh yes, I’d know his face anywhere. God, he is even hotter in person! You should see his arms and his _abs_. And his _ass_!”

Stiles halts so abruptly that he almost falls flat onto his face on the linoleum floor. He grips his shopping basket to his torso with white-knuckled fingers. He stands alone in the middle of the aisle, his breath freezing in his chest, his stomach plunging to the floor, his feet and tongue numb.

“Oh my god, what was he doing in a _lingerie shop_? Isn’t he _married_ to the Sheriff’s _son_?!”

“I know, right! But really, he was there, browsing through the _panties_ and _garter belts_ , and there was a _blonde woman_ with him.”

“ _Oh my god_.”

“Yeah, she was so hot. Like, hair down to her waist, boobs to die for and legs all the way up to her neck. She was holding his arm and they were looking through stuff together and _wow_ , you should have seen the things they picked out. So many black, lacey, _sexy_ things! I was pretty jealous, I tell you.”

Stiles stares down at his hands. They’re beginning to tremble. They feel as frail as the hands of an elderly, ailing man. He feels like someone is knifing him in the chest. His throat is sealing up.

“So she’s … his _girlfriend_? Gosh, I feel sorry for his husband.”

“She’s gotta be. Why else would he be there with her buying _lingerie_? It’s not like _he’s_ gonna wear it! He’s a _man_! And such a hot one too. I couldn’t believe it when I found out he’s married to another man. No offense, but that’s just … _gross_. Really, hot guy like that? He should be with a woman who knows how to treat him like the man he is, I’m just saying –”

Somehow, Stiles manages to drag his deadened feet forward and hobble towards the self-checkout section. He clings to his shopping basket as if it’s his sole lifeline. His heart is hammering in his chest, rupturing with each beat. He feels like the ceiling and walls of the supermarket are closing in on him and about to squash him to a bloody pulp on the floor. It’s getting more and more difficult to breathe.

Fuck, _fuck_ , he’s charging into a full-blown panic attack. He’s sure of it.

_Hold yourself together, Stilinski. You can do it._

His hands are visibly shaking now as he loads his items onto a self-checkout terminal to be scanned. He has to press the relevant buttons on the touchscreen display several times over to properly input information. He’s so glad he’s alone in the area, that no one is witness to him falling apart like this. Least of all those two women who’d been gossiping about Derek and his … _and his_ –

_Breathe. Breathe in. Out. In. Out. Just like the good old days, remember?_

His right hand is shaking so much that he can scarcely hold his credit card to the scanner. He congratulates himself on being able to bag his items without spoiling anything. He tries to blank his mind as he dashes through the exit to the parking lot, his fingers coiled around the handles of the plastic bags so tautly that his wrists ache. He shivers although he’s got a black blazer on top of his graphic print t-shirt. He’s cold and hot and sweaty and if he doesn’t get to his jeep in the next ten seconds, he’s going to collapse right here on coarse tar and never get up.

_There’s your beloved jeep, you can see it. It’s right there. Just keep going. One more step. One more._

His breaths are seesawing out of his lungs, his mouth. He nearly drops his keys to the ground. It takes him four attempts to get the key into the lock, to twist it and open the driver door.

_Come on, Stilinski. Hold yourself together, for fuck’s sakes, how are you gonna drive home like this?_

He chucks his groceries onto the front passenger seat. He glances at the seat. On its own volition, his brain supplies him with the image, the _memory_ of Derek sitting there, a younger Derek who’d threatened to punch his face and then some. He was already mad about Derek by then. He’d been so scared that Derek would smell his arousal and beat him up for real. He’d been even more scared that Derek would smell his arousal and just laugh at him for daring to _think_ he had any chance with a guy like Derek.

Now he knows a fate far worse than that.

_Breathe, Stilinski. Breathe._

He barely succeeds in pulling the door close. He sags in the driver’s seat, his tingling hands pressed to his palpitating chest, his eyes scrunched shut as the world spins and spins around him like a feverish carousel. Oh fuck, oh shit, _oh fuck_ , this is by far the worst panic attack he’s experienced. He feels like he’s having a heart attack and he knows he isn’t, he _knows_ it but his body doesn’t and he feels so fucking horrible that he must be dying, he _has_ to be –

“Oh my god, oh fuck, oh _fuck_ ,” he whispers, his eyes filled with tears behind his eyelids.

He’s crashing and burning just like he’d foreseen, his Chariot plummeting down from blackening skies as the stone blocks of his fragmenting Tower descend upon him and render him into irreparable splinters. He is a sun-god with his fire snuffed out, an Icarus without wings. Just a man, a flawed and mortal man with no one to catch him, who strikes pitiless earth and stains it with his blood and catastrophes.

Everything hurts so bad. Especially his chest and his eyes. His eyes are scrunched shut but he sees Derek with a blonde, voluptuous woman in black, lacey lingerie with hair down to the waist, with breasts to die for and legs all the way up to the neck. He sees Derek tug her to him and kiss her and fondle her. He sees Derek spread her legs and fuck her and tell her how he wished he was with her instead, how much he _loves_ her –

Stiles’ chest seizes in a paroxysm of agony. It robs him of all his air. His back and neck arch as he struggles to breathe and gets no air inside his lungs. He’s dying. He’s dying and Derek loves someone else and he wishes he really is dying.

He grabs at his rattling throat with his right hand. Covers his wet eyes with his left. He tries to exhale, to sob, to release the pressure in his chest and he fails.

He can’t even cry. He doesn’t even have that tiny reprieve.

He thrashes and ends up on his right side on the seat, his back to the driver door. The movement eases his chest by a fraction. He hunches forward. He gulps in a noisy lungful of air. Two droplets of salty water drip onto the sleeve of his blazer from his half-open eyes.

It’ll pass. It’ll pass, it will. It always does.

He gulps in more air. He wipes damp eyes with the sleeve of his blazer. He scours up the energy to take his phone out from his right jeans pocket.

Call Scott. Call Scott. Talk to Scott. Scott will know what to say to him, what to do.

He presses and holds the number ‘4’ on the number pad on the screen. Scott picks up almost instantaneously.

“Stiles! What’s up, dude?”

Scott is at the animal clinic, judging from the barks and meowing he hears in the background of the call. Scott loves his job as the head veterinarian at the clinic (since Deaton semi-retired and decided to focus on studies in magic after Scott graduated from college) and so Stiles is unsurprised that Scott is still there after working hours. Probably cuddling a puppy or ten to his muscular werewolf chest while saving just as many kittens from throttling on fur balls like the supernatural hero he is.

He tries to say hello. To speak with a normal voice.

He can’t utter a word.

“Stiles?” Scott’s tone changes. It has an edge of worry to it, and it sharpens like a blade as the growl of Scott’s true Alpha voice creeps into it. “Stiles, what happened?”

Scott’s eyes must be glowing vivid red. Scott’s definitely hearing his hitched breathing, the spasmodic throbbing of his heart. The rustling of his clothes as he hunches into himself with his phone stuck between the seat and his ear.

_Don’t spook the goddamn Alpha of Beacon Hills, you moron. Calm down._

He wipes his eyes again. Inhales wetly. Swallows hard and shelters in the shadows of his jeep.

“Derek’s cheating on me.”

He sounds like a broken chainsaw. His face is crumpling and he can’t stop it and he hates that he’s losing it like this while Scott is on the line and now has to cope with his pathetic bullshit. He doesn’t bother wiping his raw eyes or face.

It takes Scott ten whole seconds to respond, such is Scott’s shock.

“ _What_?” Scott says in a high-pitched voice.

“I’m s-sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you sooner, I didn’t k-know what to say and I thought maybe I – I was just being _stupid_ about everything but now I know it’s true, _it’s fucking true_ –“

“Stiles –“

“And I never – I never would have _known_ if I hadn’t gone l-looking for those stupid scissors in the study a-and rammed into his desk and knocked the drawer out and saw those _fucking lingerie catalogs_. He – he has a whole _stack_ of them, Scott, he looks through them so much that he _dog-ears his favorite pages_ so he can ogle his favorite women in them! And he’s been doing this behind my _back_ for _months_!”

He can hear Scott striding down a hallway, his brisk steps echoing. Scott must be heading to his office for privacy.

His chest is starting to hurt again.

“And ever since I found the catalogs, he’s been acting differently and he’s always looking at me with this _guilt_ and he didn’t even say anything when I stopped going into the study and he’s always away in Los Angeles, he’s _always_ flying there to see his _editor_ –“

“Stiles, I –“

“And I always wondered why he had to go see her in person so often when he can just _call_ her or _video-chat_ with her and then I realized she has to be his fucking _girlfriend_ and nobody knows any better because they work together! _Fuck_!”

He hears a door slam shut in the background. The click of a door knob locking. Scott’s in his office now.

His eyes are filling up again and his hands are shaking and tingling and he can’t breathe, there’s so little air in the jeep, so little of it.

“And then I was shopping in the supermarket and I overheard these two women talking about seeing Derek in a _lingerie shop_ with her and _he’s cheating on me with her_ , Scott, he’s cheating on me and he’s been _lying_ to my face all this time and those women, _those women_ were talking about how Derek deserves to be with a woman and not me, and one of them thought Derek being married to me is _disgusting_ and maybe she’s right, she’s _right_ , Derek deserves somebody so much better than me –“

“ _Stiles_.”

He goes mute and stiff as a wooden board. His mind goes mercifully vacant. He stares with wide eyes at the front passenger door, petrified by Scott’s commanding Alpha voice. The power in it is a shade of itself, intentionally restrained.

"Stiles, I’m sorry. I'm not angry with you. You didn’t do anything wrong, okay?” Scott murmurs, his voice mellifluous with remorse. “I just didn’t want you to go into another panic attack.”

The stifling weight in Stiles’ chest lessens. He blinks his eyes clear and tucks his hands between his upper arms and body. He takes a deep breath. Another. And another.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It worked.”

Scott sighs in relief. Stiles hears the squeak of leather as Scott sits down on his office chair.

“Okay. Firstly? Fuck those homophobic bitches to hell. They’re just talking crap, Stiles. They don’t even _know_ you, or Derek. They don’t know a _thing_. Secondly, tell me where you are.”

“In … in my jeep.” He blinks, his eyes owlish and hazy. “Supermarket.”

“Which supermarket?”

He stares at the plastic bags of groceries on the front passenger seat. It’s too dark to see the supermarket’s logo on them.

“I don’t … I don’t know.”

“Stiles, do you want me to go pick you up?”

Scott knows his scent as familiarly as his own. Scott can track him anywhere in town and find him and drive him home, if he asks. Scott will always find him. Scott will always be there.

“No. No, just … talk to me.”

“Okay. Okay, buddy. I’m here.”

His inhalations become deeper, easier. His hands have stopped shaking. He listens to Scott’s stable breathing. He feels Scott with him, patient and empathetic and wholehearted. His eyes and chest ache for a different reason now.

“Just let me process all that, okay?” Scott asks.

“Okay.”

The quietness of several minutes between them is one of kinship strengthened into something indestructible, something immortal by time, shared experiences and love.

“Okay. So … you found lingerie catalogs in Derek’s desk.”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“About two months ago. When he was away in Los Angeles.”

“Okay. And, he’s been acting differently. How?”

Stiles runs his tongue over dry lips. He fidgets in his seat and holds the phone to his ear with his right hand.

“He … he gives me these _looks_. When he thinks I don’t know. He looks … _guilty_. Like he’s doing something _wrong_ and he’s … he’s scared I’ll find out. And sometimes, when I touch him, I can feel him … tense up. Like … I don’t know, like he doesn’t want me touching him. I think.” He inhales audibly, then says, “And sometimes, when I still went into the study and I didn’t knock on the door, he’d look like I almost caught him doing something he shouldn’t.”

“Like, looking at those catalogs.”

“Yeah.”

Scott makes a humming noise of contemplation.

“And these trips to L.A., does he hide them from you?”

“No. No, he … he tells me when he goes. When he comes back.”

“And this _editor_ of his. Does Derek talk to you about her?”

“No. Not really. But then again, we … haven’t talked much. In a while.”

Again, Scott makes a low noise of contemplation.

“And you overheard two women talking about seeing Derek with her in L.A. at a lingerie shop?”

“Yeah. Well, it was one of the women. She said she was in the shop last week and she saw Derek with a blonde woman. His editor’s blonde. Blonde and beautiful and busty and everything Derek wants.”

“Stiles. Everything Derek wants is _you_.”

Stiles snorts in derision. He presses the back of his hands to his stinging eyes.

“Yeah. Sure he does. He wants me so bad he’s fucking his editor in Los Angeles. Yeah.”

“But you don’t know that for _sure_ , do you? Do you have _proof_? Cold, hard proof, and not just gossip you overheard?” Scott says gently.

Stiles doesn’t know what to say to that. He picks at a loose thread protruding from one of the lapels of his blazer.

“So you _think_ Derek is cheating on you, but you’re not _sure_.”

Stiles swallows scant saliva down a rough throat.

“Circumstantial evidence,” he admits faintly. “But it’s enough.”

He hears more squeaking of leather as Scott sits back in his chair.

“Okay. So that woman who saw him in the shop. She was _sure_ it was him? L.A.’s a fucking huge city and Derek’s overall appearance isn’t, well, all that unique.”

“Yeah. She recognized him. Identified him as ‘that cute supernatural crime writer’. He’s got portrait photos in his books. On the back cover.”

“He dedicates every book to you.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to say to that either. It’s true, Derek really does dedicate every novel he’s written to him. His name is the only one that appears on the dedication page.

_For Stiles, the moon to my waves, to my wolf._

So few in this world comprehend the magnitude of the deceptively simple and short sentence.

“Stiles, he’s a pretty popular author these days. He’s got his photo in his books. He goes to L.A. all the time and does promotional trips for his books. He’s recognized by his fans. Now why would he go out with his editor, his – his _mistress_ or whatever in _public_? To a _lingerie store_ , of all places? He’s not stupid, and that’s a really stupid move. If I was gonna have an affair behind my spouse’s back, I’d make sure I was _never_ seen with the other person. Much less in a freaking lingerie store! I’d keep my distance in public as much as possible so nobody would suspect anything! Not fly over to see them all the time and _tell my spouse_ every time I go.”

Stiles nibbles on his left thumbnail. Scott has a point. He does.

“But she’s his _editor_ , Scott. It’s the perfect cover for them to hang out together in public. All he has to say is, ‘Oh, she’s just my _friend_ and co-worker!’ and nobody would be the wiser. And if it wasn’t for those women talking about him, _I_ would never have found out! She was _holding his arm_ while they shopped together for _lingerie_! Do _professional co-workers_ do that?!”

Scott exhales softly.

“Something's just … not right here, Stiles. It doesn't make _sense_. It's like, you got these pieces but they don't _fit_ right. I mean, this is _Derek_ we're talking about here. The guy who dedicates all his books to you. The guy who talks about you in interviews like you’re the brightest and only sun in his galaxy. The guy who cried his eyes out in front of everyone when you read your wedding vows to him!"

Scott makes another solid point. He remembers that moment so richly; Derek, so gorgeous in that smart tuxedo, standing in front of him with those large hands covering that handsome, tear-streaked face when Derek couldn’t remain collected anymore. No one had laughed, not even Jackson who was grasping Lydia’s hand, gazing at her with very human eyes while she discreetly dabbed at hers. He was told later by Deaton (of all people!) that there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. That Scott, the wayward asshole who’d teased him and Derek the most about the vows before the wedding, had also wept the most, unashamedly wiping his face with the back of his hand.

Neither Stiles or Derek had teased him about it. No one else did. Scott wasn’t with Isaac as a couple then, not yet. Everyone knew who Scott had been thinking of during the vows.

"Yeah, well, so did you,” Stiles murmurs to Scott now, his lips quirked up.

"Who knew Stiles Stilinski was such an epic poet of love, huh?"

They chuckle together. Yeah, he’d been rather proud of the vows he wrote. It wasn’t Yates or Hemingway or even Vonnegut, but it was pure and real and a hundred percent Stiles Stilinski, and Derek had adored every word.

His miniscule smile vanishes as quickly as it’d appeared.

How has their marriage come to this, this sluggish _death_? Where did he go wrong, that their vows to each other have become hollow scribbles on paper?

"Tell me when exactly things started to change, Stiles."

He turns around on the driver’s seat to face the windshield and settles into a more comfortable position.

"I don't know,” he says after a minute. “I really don’t. You're gonna have to ask _him_. _He's_ the one who started ogling women in lingerie catalogs and – and started _hanging around_ his editor so much, not me.” He sighs and leans his head back against the headrest. “Maybe he’s … sick of dick. _My_ dick. Maybe he’s realized he doesn’t like dick all that much after all and wants to go back to vaginas, you know? Sexuality’s fluid. You know it. And that’s happened before. It wouldn’t be the first time. And what if …” He throws his left hand up in the air and then lets it land on his thigh. “What if all this is Derek’s way of telling me that he wants a _divorce_ without outright saying it?”

“Then you know what? He’s a fucking piece of shit for doing it this way!” Scott then says in a kinder voice, “C’mon, Stiles, this is Derek. _Derek_. You _know_ him. You know him better than anyone else on earth, and this isn’t _him_. He _loves_ you to death, Stiles. He’d _die_ for you. He almost _did_ die for you! Numerous times!”

Yet again, Scott drives home another good point. Many of them. A lot more bad shit had crossed their paths since the Nogitsune, like Kate fucking Argent coming back as a were-jaguar and kidnapping Derek to Mexico. He’d felt _so_ good, so _relieved_ when the dungeon Derek was imprisoned in caved in and Kate was crushed to death. (She deserved far crueler a demise than that for murdering most of Derek’s family, but he’ll take what he can get.) Then there was that rabid centaur that tried so damn hard to kill him and Scott and then almost killed Derek in the process by trampling on him. There was that coven of witches that put a curse on Danny and turned the poor guy into a mindless slave, and when the rest of the pack attacked the coven, one of the witches launched a goddamn _fireball_ at him and Derek jumped in front of him and took the fireball in his chest. Derek was wounded so severely that he was in a coma for four days, his upper body a cavernous, gory mess of exposed organs striving to heal while Scott and Isaac continuously drained the suffering from Derek.

Then there was that merman who could change his tail into human legs who stalked him while he was back in Beacon Hills for the holidays. That’d been a terrifying experience; the merman had kidnapped him in broad daylight and hauled him to the beach in the hopes of transforming him into a merman too. Derek had been so enraged that when Derek and the others found him – just before the merman yanked him underwater, thank _fuck_ – Derek had gone berserk and battled with the merman in glacial waters and ripped off the screaming merman’s fins on the beach. If Scott and Isaac hadn’t tackled him, Derek would surely have ripped off the merman’s tail as well.

And all that … all that had happened _before_ they confessed their feelings to each other and became lovers.

But that was then. And this is now.

“People change, Scott,” Stiles says croakily, bowing a head heavy with mourning. “Things change. They can change, just like that.”

Scott says nothing to that. Scott knows that excruciating fact more than anybody else.

“I just ... I just can't bear it if he tells me he doesn’t love me anymore and he really is fucking his editor behind my back and … leaves me. I will go back to Eichen House and stay there for life, I swear it, Scott. I will.”

“Derek won't let you. _I_ won't let you.”

He can’t be bothered snorting this time.

“Yeah, well, Derek will be busy fucking his new _hot, blonde girlfriend_ so I don't think he'd give a fuck where I end up.”

“Stiles. C’mon. You know that's not true. It's your pain, your overthinking brain, your _paranoia_ talking here. Not you. You know that.”

An undemanding hush falls upon them. Stiles slumps in his seat and stares out the windshield at the metal fence bordering the parking lot. Scott’s right. He knows Scott’s right about him yammering out of spite, but he also knows that something’s gone really wrong with his relationship with Derek. If he’s doing things right, making Derek happy, why would Derek even _think_ about straying from him?

He must have fucked up somewhere. He must have. He just doesn’t know _where_.

“Lingerie catalogs. Dog-eared pages,” Scott mumbles to himself. “Recent change in behavior …”

Stiles can’t help but smile a bit. Verbally listing things out whenever he brainstorms over something is _his_ habit. At this point, he and Scott are like two complex puzzles whose pieces have become irreversibly mingled one way or another, still individual entities though also merged along their edges into something enhanced, united. They are so much like each other and yet so unlike each other. They’re brothers who chose each other, their bond stronger than flesh and blood. He can’t imagine a life without Scott.

He can’t imagine a life without Derek, either. All he sees is an abyss where Derek should be and isn’t.

And Derek is everywhere, everything.

“Travelling often but always telling you when and where he goes. Going to a lingerie shop in public with his editor in L.A. ...”

Scott is drumming something on a wooden surface. Probably his fingernails. His claws will leave holes.

“Tensing up when you touch him. Looking … guilty.”

The drumming ceases. Scott is silent for at least ten seconds. Stiles hears his stable breaths.

“Scott?”

He hears leather squeaking as Scott sits up. Hears Scott’s sharp intake of breath.

“Lingerie catalogs … _The lingerie catalogs_. They’re in his desk, _his_ , not hers because –“ Scott huffs out what sounds like a laugh of surprise. Of _relief_. “Holy shit.”

Stiles frowns in bafflement.

“Scott, what –“

“Stiles, _Stiles_ , do you remember the dog-eared pages in those catalogs? Like, what the lingerie in them were like?”

Stiles’ brow furrows more even as his lower jaw sags. What the hell, why is Scott interested in _that_?

“What? _No_ , why would I remember _that_? Like I want all those _women_ in all that _lingerie_ stuck in my head –“

“What kind of lingerie did he and his editor buy at the store? Did those women say? Like, did he buy a _bra_? Or other stuff instead? And in what _size_?”

His mouth is open so wide that he can probably fit his jeep in it. He presses the heel of his left hand to his forehead, then flails his left arm as he sputters, “I – what – you … Scott! I – I don’t know, I think the woman said something about ‘black, lacey, _sexy_ things’ but what the fuck, why does any of that _matter_?! They obviously went there to buy lingerie for _her_ , the girlfriend, _mistress_! And he obviously never thought it would get back to me since she’s all the way in Los Angeles and I’m all the way here in Beacon Hills or in Virginia!”

Scott huffs out another laugh, a low and amused one.

“Stiles … I love you but I swear, man, sometimes you can be the most oblivious dumbass in the world.”

Stiles sputters again, his eyes wide with indignation.

“My marriage may be over, and _that’s_ what you have to say to me?”

“Yep.”

Well, shit, he didn’t expect Scott to say _that_.

He pinches the skin between his eyebrows. He leans his forehead on the steering wheel, gripping it with his left hand.

“You know what? You’re right. I am a dumbass. I am the worst. I failed, Scott. I’m a fucking lousy Chariot driver. I failed and that’s why my marriage is failing too.”

It’s now Scott’s turn to splutter.

“You – that … holy shit, you still remember that tarot card thing I did. That was like, what? Six years ago?”

“Yeah.”

He hears more squeaking noises as Scott shifts in his chair.

“Hey, who says you haven’t been doing a good job of driving the Chariot, huh?”

“Me. This. All of this crap. Derek running to somebody else because I’m not good enough anymore. You know, _that_.”

“That’s the thing about you, Stiles. You’re such a damn smart and insightful guy about everything and everybody else, but when it comes to _yourself_ , you can be pretty blind.”

He doesn’t have to see it to know Scott’s shaking his head with fondness. He rolls his eyes and mutters, “When it comes to me and Derek, right?”

Scott snorts in mild amusement at that.

“Yeah. Seriously. You two might as well be one.” Scott clears his throat, then says in a more solemn voice, “Listen. The relationship between the Tower and the Chariot, it’s something you gotta work at _together_. That’s what it’s all about. Yeah, as the Chariot, you gotta ride the skies the best you can, but you need a _compass_ too. You need a landmark, an _anchor_ to keep you on the right track, and _that’s_ the Tower’s job. You wanna talk about fucking up relationships? It takes _two_ to do that. And if you’re so convinced _you’re_ fucking things up, then guess what? _He’s_ fucking something up too, and you two need to work together to restore balance and control to each other. You gotta remember the _light_ as much as the darkness. He’s your Tower, dude, and you’re his Chariot. He needs you like you need him. You’re each other’s anchors. You’re just … _right_ together. You two were fated to _be_ , man.”

Stiles raises his head and leans back in his seat, his chest warm, his throat tight. Scott really does know just what to say to him to make him feel better. Say it, and _mean_ it.

He wants to believe Scott. He wants to believe again, so badly. He wants everything to be back the way it was before he found those catalogs, before Derek found him wanting and sought satisfaction in someone else.

“Stiles. Derek is notcheating on you. Just trust me on this, okay? Derek is _not_ cheating on you. I’m sure of it.”

Stiles draws in a wobbly breath.

_How? How are you so sure, Scott?_

“Okay,” he mumbles instead. A little, white lie.

He wants to believe Scott, really, he does. But Scott _doesn’t_ have cold, hard proof that Derek isn’t cheating on him, either. Scott may be wrong anyway in spite of his faith in Derek and in their marriage.

“Good. So stop wasting your time with me already and go home to your husband.” Scott pauses. “Is he in town? Or …”

“Yeah. He’s at home. He … he came back from Los Angeles yesterday.”

“Okay.” Scott pauses again, then says, “Remember what I said. Remember that you can always talk to me. Any time. We’ve been the bestest pals since we were toddlers, and you know when that’ll change? Never.”

Stiles smiles, and it reaches his eyes.

“Hey, Scott?”

“Yeah?”

Stiles’ smile widens. His eyes crinkle.

“I love you too, buddy.”

He know Scott is also smiling.

“Yeah, I know. Drive home safe. Call me again if you need to, dumbass.”

After the call ends, Stiles’ hands are steady as he puts his phone back into his jeans pocket and starts the jeep. He drives home in a dreamlike haze. His body feels numb, in a pleasant way. He feels purged. Cleansed. For now.

He parks his jeep next to Derek’s ruby-red, sixth-generation Camaro outside the Hale house. _Their_ house. Derek considers the car theirs too, but it being a Camaro, Stiles always thinks of it as Derek’s. He has bittersweet memories of Derek’s first Camaro, the black one that Derek later sold for that godawful SUV (which Derek sold a few weeks after he moved in with Derek). He remembers seeing Derek and Erica in it, Derek smirking at him while he gaped at them and probably looked like an imbecile. What he can’t quite remember anymore is how he’d been then, what it’d _felt_ like to be that gangly, awkward teenager who believed he wasn’t cool enough to have a girlfriend, a _boyfriend_. To be a member of the cool clique. To be Derek’s friend.

He hasn’t been a teenager for a very long time.

He wonders if Derek had been enticed by his youthfulness and naiveté more than anything else. He wonders if Derek doesn’t find him attractive anymore because he’s gotten old and jaded and seen more death and horror now than Derek has.

He enters the house through the front door and brings the groceries to the kitchen. There’s no sign of Derek having cooked anything for dinner, or eaten dinner. He knows Derek’s home since the Camaro is here. Probably in the study again, working on his book. Looking at those catalogs. Wishing he’s in Los Angeles with … her.

Stiles still feels numb as he puts away the groceries in the fridge. He hasn’t eaten anything since lunch with his dad at the station. He isn’t hungry. Maybe he’ll just crash in front of the television. Watch one of those inane reality shows and just –

“Stiles? There’s angel hair pasta with pesto from Crezsenzo’s in the fridge, the one you like. I wasn’t sure when you were coming back so –“

Derek’s standing at the entrance to the kitchen. Derek’s wearing a white tank top and jeans. The tank top seems to mold to Derek’s torso, delineating every curvature of Derek’s strapping chest and abdomen. He can see the silken, dark fuzz of Derek’s chest hair peeking out over the low collar of the tank top. He misses running his fingers through it. He misses rubbing his face against it, misses hearing Derek laugh when he does that. He can’t quite remember what that’s like, now.

He stares at Derek who stares back at him with wide, stunned eyes. He’s mystified by the alarm he sees on Derek’s face. Then, he gets it.

His panic attack earlier. The extreme stress his body had endured. He must look like a fucking wreck, his eyes red and puffy, his hair and clothes a disheveled mess, his face pallid. He can only guess what he _smells_ like to Derek.

He’s unable to control the jerk of his body when Derek hurries to him and grasps his forearms with both hands. Derek hasn’t physically touched him in over a week, since before Derek left for Los Angeles.

A single touch shouldn’t be making him choke up like this. It shouldn’t.

“Stiles, are you okay?”

He stares at Derek’s face, at the palpable concern etched upon its handsome features. He stares and memorizes every crease and arc and strand of hair, every line in Derek’s dark pink lips, every flicker of color of Derek’s large eyes. If he is to forget everything else, he wants to remember these things about Derek. To remember Derek gazing at him this way, to read from Derek’s eyes, _you’re hurt, you’re hurting and seeing you this way makes me hurt too and I want to make your pain go away_.

He considers lying. He doesn’t want Derek’s concern only to have Derek withdraw his love and give it to someone else behind his back. He doesn’t want a travesty of affection if Derek’s only pretending to care so he thinks everything’s fine.

“I don’t know, Derek,” he whispers, because Derek deserves nothing less than the truth, either. Because he doesn’t have to lie just because Derek is lying to him. “And I … I’d really rather not talk about it.”

_Not now. Not yet._

He feels Derek’s hands constrict around his wrists. Not out of upset or anger. It’s an involuntary action, one born from surprise. From anguish. Derek’s gaze drops from his face to the vicinity of his collarbones. Derek’s face has turned stoic, but those eyes, those _eyes_ have lost their scales tonight and Stiles sees a tempest of emotions in them.

He extracts his right forearm from Derek’s grip. He lifts his hand to Derek’s cheek and cups it.

He hears Derek’s breath snag. Derek’s face is unguarded again. Vulnerable.

He strokes the apple of Derek’s cheek with his thumb.

If there’s something he’s certain of now, it’s that Derek’s happiness will always be paramount to him. If Derek wants out of their marriage, if Derek’s found happiness with someone else and wants to move on from him … he’ll still love Derek.

“I love you,” he says, impelling every ounce of sincerity, of _memories_ into the three words.

_I don’t know why I’m not good enough for you anymore. I don’t know where I went wrong. But I love you. I’ll always love you._

He’s probably just imagining the glistening of Derek’s eyes under the ceiling lights of the kitchen.

“I love you,” Derek rasps, squeezing his left wrist almost to the point of pain. Cleaving to him as if he doesn’t want to let him go.

The smile on his lips is tremulous as he rubs Derek’s cheek. Yes, he’ll have this to remember as well, when a platinum ring no longer adorns his finger and he’s alone again. Naturally.

He drags himself away from Derek and shuffles out of the kitchen. He doesn’t look back. He can’t. Not if he doesn’t want to think about how their I love yous had sounded just like goodbye.

Derek doesn’t chase after him.

In the en suite bathroom, he avoids looking at himself in the mirror above the sink while he washes up for the night. He crawls into bed and huddles on his side under the covers, tugging them up to his chin. He’s tired. So tired. He wants to sleep for an eternity.

He shuts his eyes. He buries his face in his pillow.

He hears the bedroom door open and close. He hears Derek walk in, into the bathroom. He hears Derek brushing his teeth. He hears the bathroom light being switched off.

The bed dips under Derek’s weight as Derek climbs in.

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t breathe as Derek slides behind him and then enfolds him in a snug embrace. Derek’s nestling his face into the side of his neck, holding his hands so tight that he can’t move his fingers. Derek hasn’t hugged him like this since they had sex a month ago. He never thought Derek would want to hold him like this again.

He feels the heat of Derek’s breath and the prickling of Derek’s beard against his neck. He feels Derek’s fingers and legs intertwine with his. He feels Derek’s chest rise and fall against his back.

He feels like he’s truly come home.

He squeezes Derek’s hands back. He goes limp. He falls asleep as Derek pulls him in tighter, and if he dreams, he doesn’t remember it.

He sleeps well, better than he has in months.

 


End file.
